Your Learner Sketch

Please note: When you complete the Learner Sketch, make sure to download or email yourself a copy of your Learner Sketch report, which will contain suggested learning strategies and hyperlinks to additional information that you will not see unless you access this full report.

What an amazing person. I’m happy to know of your existance! I can’t decide what I’m most impressed with; raising 7 children, getting a degree at age 50, or teaching special education. All impressive feats in and of themselves! Thanks : )

Donna,
Yes, you are a very enthusiastic person! How wonderful for you to be part of this profession. In my elementary school, we have aspire classes and the students are very challenged. I am always amazed by the level of understanding, empathy, patience and positive attitudes that my colleagues exhibit that teach in these areas. You are a special person to do this as your “career change!”

It is good to hear that there are other’s in my age group (50’s) that are still pursuing a career in Eduction. God bless you for choosing to work with students with special needs. In my career as a school social worker, I have experienced to love and compassion it takes to work with this group of children. May you go far in your journey to make learning available for all! Janet

Wow kudos to you! I really like this activity/survey profile! It was hard to decide if some indicator applied or not. But overall it was pretty accurate. I am a very time/spatial and organization driven and it was interesting to think about how others close to me function on these scales.

I was in the same boat as you Donna although I made my “change” just prior to 40 and while I was in the process of raising 3 children. I just wanted to find a field where I could make a difference by teaching people how to focus on the positive and to focus on their strengths.

I’m having the same isue. I like the blog and all the info! great website but I can’t get to the discover your own learning scetch tool. I entered my name and clickd go and nothing happens?? am I missing an app on my computer?

Go to http://www.facesoflearning.net/your-learner-sketch/, and as long as you have a device that can read Flash, it should work fine – although it may take a few seconds to load. We’re working now to make sure that all future versions can be accessed on all sorts of devices.

that didn’t work, either – I get to the first page, enter my email, and then…nothing – is there a hidden link I should click to get it to go on to the next pages? I watched the Prezi, but until the program moves forward, I’m pretty much stuck on the sign-in page.

As an education student, the current climate in the US socio-political discourse is alternately terrifying and darkly inspiring. Organizations like this one give me one more bright hope to drive my journey to the classroom.

Hey — thanks Kresta! I hope you’ll share your learning story — and urge your friends, students and colleagues to do the same. Perhaps the Learner Sketch Tool can even become a useful resources to you and your students. Please keep us posted and help spread the word!

Hi Kresta,
You are a brave student to pursue a degree in education. Over the past 21 years so many things have changed in this profession. People who are creating curriculums often have never been in a classroom! That being said – on the upside, I applaud you. The profession is not easy; however, it is extremely rewarding. That’s why we become teachers!

You bet! At the end of the sketch, you’ll find a link that will let you email yourself a PDF of the report. Please keep us posted and let us know how you and your students use it, and to what extent it helps you in your work.

As a mother of a 11-year-old son with learning challenges, I wanted to explore your tool first. I find it visually entertaining and graphically stimulating and it seems to offer a nice broad-stroke overview of strengths. Thanks for all your work…

We’re glad to hear from a parent who is finding this helpful! Make sure to also explore the supporting content on the Faces of Learning website – there are more strategies suggested and additional resources listed that you may find useful.

Hi Robert,
We’d love to hear your thoughts about what substance you’d find useful. Our plan is to continue to develop and offer additional tools to support learners and learning. What would you like to see developed?

Sam – the Faces of Learning stories, your presentation in Kansas City, and website information has filled my mind with new ideas and perspectives about what it means to learn and to be a learner. The immediate effect of this information has been to ground my thinking about teaching/learning in my own learning experiences. Every time I consider a new lesson or teaching strategy, I take myself through the paces of the learning experience. How would I respond as a learner now? How would I have responded as a 15 year old learner? Those are often different answers, but both provide insight to learning and help make me a more effective and more compassionate teacher.

Scot! So glad to hear this, and I think your distinction is vital, and will further clarify how I think about learning. How we are likely to respond as adults, and as 15-year-olds, is exactly the kind of distinction a great teacher makes. Thanks for surfacing this for me.

Sam, Nice to see your name attached to this project. I’m working on my Masters Degree and came across here. I went through the questions for myself and saw the summary profile at the end. I’d like to see some hyperlinks to how to modify the learning environment to best help “such” kind of learner. Giving someone a label is limiting in what can be done, however providing assistance makes the label helpable.

Hey Suzi, Good to see you here as well. There’s a whole report at the end you can download as a PDF, so be sure to check that out. And of course the point of the Learner Sketch is to stop labeling people as particular types of learners, and start providing people with insight into the range of mental constructs that influence learning. We want to help people use those insights to enhance and support learning, which is why suggested strategies are an integral part of both the Learner Sketch report and the “Science of Learning” pages on the FOL website — http://www.facesoflearning.net/questions/how-do-i-learn/science-of-learning/. So please check it out and help us spread the word!

Graduated 1981 with a Special Education Degree and never used it formally (owned two restaurants and “raised” 50 teenagers). Am now a Kindergarten/Pre-K teacher in a small school and came across your program……..Love Love Love it. There was nothing like this when I was in school. I am now tasked with learning and teaching my fellow teachers in our small private school. Thank you

Although there is a place to enter your name when you begin the sketch, the name does not show up anywhere on the sketch itself. I want to use this with groups of 7-8 middle schoolers at a time, but the logistics of emailing and/or downloading make the task difficult. Without a name attached to each sketch, it will be difficult to determine whose is whose when they are printed. Can you please add the name into the report?

I love this site and hope to use the inventory with my students at the start of this school year. I envision them e-mailing me their report which I would save to their file on my computer. However, I don’t see a way that the reports would come to me with any sort of differentiation between them. How will I know which is Susie’s and which is David’s? I really don’t want to have to print 11 pages for each student (over half a ream of paper for my class.)

As a sophomore student in high school, I can easily focus but just forget a lot of important facts that may be said throughout the class time. I remember things a little better when I wrote them down or When I say them out loud. Also, I seem to do better when I talk about the subject with a friend after class.

Hello All,
Just completed my Learner Profile and was not surprised about my results. The areas which I felt I wasn’t that good at 🙁 , well it’s
all still true. I am most proud of the category that stated “Getting Along with Others” and all the different strengths that I have relating to this area. We work very closely with each other in my school, and it’s important that we cooperate and are able to talk about our ideas with each other. Any new ideas or strategies are benefits for the students. I had to laugh when I came out with a strength relating to “keeping track” of particular things. I am very organized. My family laughs at me because when they are looking for something I can often respond with something like ” third shelf, on the left, behind the blue box.”

I found the learning style profile adequate w.r.t to myself. I have a doctorate degree in Special Education, with my research on Learning Disabilities in India. The challenges in the Indian classrooms are huge with a few similar concerns as that of what happens in the west.
I feel the knowledge of learning styles is a empowering tool for any teacher as it helps in not only ‘knowing’ the student but also in appropriate content and pitching of her lesson delivery. This concept is not widespread in the Indian schools but there has been small inroads in enhancing teaching practices.
I hope to explore much more at this forum, learning from experiences of such a vast community.

I really feel the learning profile could be used used to help many students and teachers. I am totally positive about the profile but I work with elementary (pk-2nd) it is hard for them to verbally explain their learning preferences. Many times it is a lot of guess work for the educational team to find the learning profile.

Completing the Learner Profile (which is something I’ve done in the past in a different format) was interesting. It made me stop and think about myself and how I learn and how my students learn. I think that looking at ourselves, honestly, and then thinking about the students and how we can help them can only make us better educators.

Well it did have some interesting results….I think I must sit down and think about what I need to do to improve some areas. There are some other tests that you can do with children to see how they learn and this results can be used in our classes.

I came into teaching by accident. I went to college for business and was working in the business field, but as my two girls got older, I wanted to be home after school. I quit my job and looked for another with mother’s hours. I found a teacher’s aide job. I loved the profession and went back to school becoming a special education teacher. I’ve been teaching for 6 years. Love it!

The Learners Sketch was interesting. As an early intervention teacher in an elementary school, I found that the strategies for building weak skills appeared to be easy to do. I think I can transfer them to the students that I teach.
I have been teaching for 20 years; 19 years at the same school. I started going to school to be come a teacher’s assistance, but found that the pay was not adequate to raise a family of four as a single parent. I continued my education and have been in love with my profession every since. Realize that being in love with it and liking it are two different things. My position is not like a regular classroom teacher’s. I get to teach my students where they are and try to bring them up to where they should be. This course will help me to address the differences that my students are challenged with.

I found this exercise eye-opening for me. As a middle school special education teacher, I spend a lot of time helping my students understand their own strengths and weaknesses but seldom self-reflect on my own strengths and weaknesses.

I really enjoyed this activity and I totally believe that this can be beneficial in the classroom if used. I am an ESE teacher(Special Education) at an alternative school for behavior and this activity can be a great resource to use as students enter my school.

It’s very fantastic educational idea that I have ever read before. Debunking the myth of exploring make me understand about individual strengths in learning ability. So I agree with this content that i explored my ability. I think that it’s very important for developing the personal or professional educational experience to date. It’s okay I get it.

I’ve been teaching P.E. for 30 years grades PreK4-8th grade. When I tell people this most comment I hated P.E. class. This really bothers me. I try to make my class fun and just ask the students to do their best and encourage them knowing some can do bettter with effort and believing in themselves.

I did the interactive “learner sketch”. I thought it was interesting, and I agreed with my strengths and challenges. It was interesting to distinguish different aspects of memory and spacial thinking, and realizing that I have both strengths and challenges within these areas. It’s a lot of information to take in though, I will have to return to go through the suggested strategies and recommended articles.

I am so glad that I was able to use this program and see what my strengths and weaknesses as a learner are. I had an idea but it is a great thing to see it on paper and to be able to share it with my students.

I am a school social worker in North Carolina. Working with such a diverse group is very educational. within the school system. I never know what to expect to happen on a day to day basis, and that is why I love my job so much. Assisting students that have needs as common as needing school supplies to a child who is in need of mental health referrals is common practice. If I new that this would become my life’s passion, finding it in my 20’s would have been wonderful!

I retired from teaching public school music 6 years ago, and immediately jumped into teaching (facilitating) an online music appreciation class – the students are “dual enrolled” for both high school and college credit (the course itself is offered through a local community college). I find that I am increasingly frustrated in trying to convince these students to (a) keep up with the work and (b) submit truly thoughtful responses to the music they are required to listen to. There is a textbook, so reading is involved as well in helping them to formulate their thoughts.

Perhaps I put too much thought into this, but I found myself leaving a few items in the middle. I know I’m a diverse learner, but I didn’t think it would be so skewed. This activity was a good eye-opener for me.

I think learning profiles are very important to be certain that we are reaching all students. I have been guilty of having a lesson and then when it was time for the students to apply their learning there is a student with no clue. Hopefully with these suggestions I can prevent this from occurring.

My name is Costa Mrema from Tanzania East Africa. At the age of 48, I made the decision to join the educational profession and worked for an education degree. I took almost 5 years to complete the studies. I joined teaching department 6 months ago as a PE teacher for upper primary level school and middle school. I don’t have the experience in the field of teaching, therefore I am searching ways from experienced educators to help me find the areas that I may be involved in the educational process in order to help any student who needs to have education regardless of his or her learning difference.

I am entering my third decade as an educator. I am pleased to take this MOOC and pursue greater knowledge of learning differences. My learning style has been evaluated multiple times as I travel through the different educational trends.

I too am in a mid life career change. I am a life long learner going back to college later in life eventually receiving my M.A. A main thing I have learned is that there is only one constant and that is change. This learner sketch helped with some newer strategies for me to work in my weak areas instead of only focusing on my strengths (my comfort zone).

I like this resource, http://www.facesoflearning.net/your-learner-sketch/ that we can use for our students to find out what kind of learner they are. It is too interesting for me to model my own learning styles and too fascinating for me to find out my own and acknowledging my strengths then start working on developing my weaknesses into possible potential strengths. I had been in the library profession for almost 23 years now but I believe this will be my most interesting school year because I will try to focus on establishing a learning environment that are suited for everybody based on their individual learning styles that is very challenging for me.

I was very interested in the suggestions for teaching to other learning styles than my own. I know that I have a habit of teaching like I learned the material and my expectations tend to lean toward the ones I have for myself. This really helped me see how I can change my teaching to help others individually.

Going through the above process made me laugh at myself. I’m such an oxymoron. I’m one thing then in the next description, I’m the complete opposite. At the age of 60 and planning to work on my Masters in Literacy and Language, I will have to work on my “oxymoron-ishes” tendencies to get through my courses!

Hi Cari,
We’ve never yet met someone with no strengths. Everyone has strengths, and plenty of them! That said, the Learner Sketch Tool is self reported – you would have had to drag every statement to the “Not Like Me” section of the screen to end up with no strengths. You may want to try taking it again – and consider asking others to help you identify areas of strength.

I am not sure if we teach the way we learn but maybe they way we were “taught” to teach. I noticed this week that my students learned so much more when I gave them the freedom to explore and work at their own pace than when I pair them up or lead direct instruction. I know it is not feasible to do this all of the time but making the students responsible for their own learning forces them to actually learn!

Okay . . . so I am a 40 something year old and already knew I had memory issues!!! Confirmed once again! I already use lumosity whenever I have time, but tend to avoid those games that would strengthen my weaknesses because they frustrate me. 🙂 I frequent those lumosity games that play to my strengths!

I love this website!! I think my students would benefit from taking this survey. It would be a great lesson for them to self evaluate themselves on how they retain information and how they use their study skills.

My learning preference is visual learning. I have auditory processing disorder. Thus, I flourish with the use of a whiteboard, visual aids, and graphic organizers. I learned that I don’t retain much information with just oral instruction.

My name is Carolyn McDaniel. I decided to enter college later in life because my oldest son kept at me about going to school. I kept telling him and I hated school, but I did not want to discourage my younger sons, so I entered the world of college and I am glad I did. I preceded to get my Bachelor’s degree, graduated Magna Cum Laude and now is pursuing my Master’s degree in special education. I chose special education because I have worked with children with specials needs for a long time. I even had a daughter who was special needs but died of an unknown birth defect and her twin brother who has disabilities. Although I do not want to teach in the classroom, I would like to an advocate for parents with children with disabilities. I am now 60 years old but I feel a person never gets to old to learn.